Pub 52 - Posted in UOhall

This is a full list of public changes we've made in this publish, including more details about the turn-ins and events coming up. This information may change during the course of testing as we make some adjustments.

Contents:
Scenario 1: War of Shadows
Faction Updates
House Placement Changes
Spring Cleaning 2008
New Music
General Fixes
Testing Guidelines

Scenario 1: War of Shadows
This publish introduces the advance forces of the Shadowlords, continually harassing the outlying Britannian cities during this scenario. Below are some details about the events coming up!

Vanguard Controller
Rides the Dread Warhorse
Wields Obsidian Blade and Chaos Shield
Commands small units that attack the populace, from brigands to nightmares
Special AI to handle movement during combat

New mount: Dread Warhorse
More powerful than a nightmare
Special radius poison attack (when untamed)
Special display "trick" for owners (when tamed)
Requires 3 control slots

The scenario will unfold over the coming month on a weekly basis, with ongoing appearances by the Vanguard. You can look forward to:
The Moonglow rift being closed
Access to more of the Ethereal Void
A major shift in politics
... and more!

Faction Updates
In order to promote accessibility and invigorate Factions, we’ve made several changes and fixed some bugs. Additionally, Factions will play an important role in the Warriors of Destiny plot arc.
Faction size limit and load balancer removed: individual factions can grow to any size.
Previously capped at 200.
Multiple characters from the same account may join the same faction
An account cannot have characters in different factions on the same shard
Removed 30 day character age requirement
“Young” players cannot join factions
“Young” players will be removed from guilds that join factions
One vote in faction elections per account
Only one character per account may run in the elections
15 day character age requirement to run in or vote in elections
Quit time reduced from 7 days to 3 days
Resolved issues with ghosts using stairs
All account restrictions are based on the server played on. You can have an account in Shadowlords on Pacific, and Minax on Atlantic, but not have an account try to be in both factions on the same server.

House Placement Changes
This publish adds the ability to safely resize your house, and implements several changes to prevent house placement exploits.

House resizing:
Saying “I wish to resize my house” demolishes your house as though you’d used that option from the house sign
Places a one hour account-bound placement zone where your house used to be
Any character on the account is guaranteed replacement on the same plot for an hour
Circumvents the normal 7 week delay between demolishes/rebuilds
The new house can be smaller or larger than the original area, as long as the surrounding area can accommodate the change

Changes:
15 day character age requirement to place or trade a house
Water barrels/magic fields/etc will no longer block house placementIDOC behavior (houses that collapse through decay)
When an IDOC drops, housing cannot be placed on the lot for a random amount of time
Items that drop from the IDOC will have protections against scripted looting
House placement tool will have a cooldown if used too many times in a given time period
Must now wait one hour after building a home before demolishing it (previously 15 minutes)

Spring Cleaning 2008

Ah, how time flies. Spring has come once again to Britannia, but the sweet smell of blossoming flowers outside our homes can’t belie the memories of battles fought long so very long ago. Or is that the chest overflowing with Ophidian weapons in the corner? Or maybe it’s the bag of cursed artifacts hidden upstairs?

<font color="red"> Time to cleanup, Britannia! </font>
Publish 52 institutes the first round of Spring Cleaning collections and rewards
Four NPCs around the world collect items in exchange for tickets
The tickets can be redeemed for rewards in a new community collection in Britain
The following list of turn-ins and rewards are subject to change during testing - especially redemption values of points. Also, more rewards, including a mouse hole house-addon, will be available in Publish 53.

Britain (Trammel), South guard tower at Castle Britannia entrance
Siege: Guard tower southwest of West Britain Bank
Community collection box is located with Onoe the Soldier.

New Music
We've just added four brand new themes to UO! These will be integrated into various areas and epic battles, but you can listen to them right now by navigating to the /Music/Digital folder in your 2D installation.

Castle
Festival
Honor
Medieval
These new pieces are courtesy of Michael Gluck, who also arranged the Battle on Stones theme for us last year.

General Fixes
Fixed a bug where players that use the Basket of Herbs could lose 20 points of cooking when the effect wears off instead of 10 points of cooking.
Explosion potion should no longer go off and reveal the player if the player is in no play mode (character transfer).
Pet release gump should now closed the moment a player is in no play mode during a character transfer.
Players should no longer be able to stable pets while a pet trade gump is open.
Spellweaving: Essence of Wind. Casting Speed and SSI debuff potency have been flip flopped
Fixed an issue with Ronin not being able to access secures in their own houses if permissions were set to "guild"
The Curse spell should no longer sometimes last past its intended duration
When a monster casts Curse on players the icon should now show in the buff icon tool bar
Fixed bugs where Paroxymus's swamp dragon can despawn if it is killed
Fixes the 2 rare mounts obtained from peerless mobs.
Will no longer be marked as a summoned pet.
Will no longer be deleted by other monsters special moves.
Fixed a bug where some "Sacks of Flour" could not be used as a cooking ingredient
Players guarded by pets that are attacked via the Paralyze spell in a guard zone will no longer get guardwhacked
Flattened the ground to remove pit in Moonglow, on tram/fel.
Players who transfer to a shard from another will no longer start in Magincia.
Fixed a bug with the weight of stacks of bola balls being incorrect
Small stacks of ore should no longer get stuck in "This object is in use" mode
Runic fishing poles made with Oak will not return values of 0 any longer
$$$ Commas can now be seen in checks (instead of 1000000, you will see 1,000,000) $$$

Testing Guidelines

Stay tuned for announcements! We'll be doing public tests for IDOCs and more!

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